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When it comes to things like this I’m often caught in a rough spot being a published author and a self-published author who also blogs regularly. In other words, this blog isn’t just here for me to concentrate on my published books and to try to persuade you to buy them. I do post information about my books here often, and I hope people buy them, but I also blog about a variety of topics, from pop culture to LGBT issues, to publishing.

So in cases like this, with regard to the paid book review issue that’s been going on with Hugh Howey and a few other well known self-published authors, the best I can do is remain completely objective and link to information out there without forming an opinion. You can read more about this in a previous post I wrote last week, here.

Since then, there’s been another post by ZonAlert naming Howey and another self-pubbed author I never heard of. And I’ve also read several blog posts by people who are supporting Hugh Howey in particular. This one I’m linking to now is interesting because there’s a huge photo of Hugh Howey sitting with a group of what appear to be happy, friendly Amish people (the author of the post writes Amish Sci-Fi Books). I’ll have to ask my good Amish buddy I posted about once here, if they are Amish. As a side note, since my Amish friend wrote that guest post, I have kept up my correspondence with him almost daily and we’ve become very good cyberfriends. He’s a fascinating man, and he’s helped break my stereotypical images of the Amish. Unfortunately, you won’t see me posing in photos with him any time soon…or anyone Amish. I have too much respect for him to exploit him that way.

He (Howey) is paying me off because he is changing the publishing industry, challenging the status quo, creating a wake for other authors to follow, and completely revolutionizing the relationship between author and reader.

Now I know that there are people who are on a witch hunt for so-called “fake” reviews. I hate to even use the term “witch hunt”, because as bad as the Salem Witch Trials were, at least you knew the names of the accusers, you knew what they believed,and what criteria they used to declare someone a “witch.” No one was hiding in the shadows in Salem… at least the principle accusers and judges were not. The accusers were up on the stand too, and they’ve been judged by posterity and found wanting.

Blogger Confronts Fox News on Nudity

Speaking of blogging, this is the kind of story all bloggers love to hear. There is a week long series of events at Brown University called “Nudity in the Upspace.” The entire event focuses on body image. It’s not smutty or dirty. It’s designed to help people feel better about their bodies, and to show that nudity is natural. I’ve posted about that, too, and how I’ve been to many nude beaches over the years and after the first five minutes of being nude you don’t even realize it anymore because it feels so normal. But when a blogger at Brown University found out Fox News was coming to report on “Nudity in the Upspace,” she decided to turn the tables on the reporter and film him instead to make sure he wouldn’t turn his report into anything sensational or tasteless…because that’s been done before.

Full disclosure: I’m not an expert on Nudity in the Upspace or nude events. I’ve never been to SexPowerGod, and I’m probably going to pass on Nudity in the Upspace this year. But that doesn’t mean I don’t agree with its mission statement, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I won’t defend my home, my school, when it comes under attack for the third time by Bill O’Reilly and his team of “Fair and Balanced” reporters.

The Fox News reporter, Jesse Watters, said this:

“If there’s a naked event on a college campus,” Watters said, “I want to investigate it.”

You can read more in BlogDailyHerald. There’s a video where Jesse Watters talks about nudity. But he doesn’t take off his pants.

A small blogger recently wrote a less than stellar book review for Anne Rice’s Pandora, and when Rice found out about this review she mentioned it on social media and Anne Rice fans ran to her defense creating the kind of firestorm that has caused many bloggers to rethink their comment policy. There’s even a familiar voice to the m/m romance community on the comment thread.

When the blogger/reviewer compared Rice to Stephanie Meyer in the review, one person lashed out with such a vituperative (I love that word) attack, wishing the blogger would get herpes, even I held my breath. And I’ve seen a lot, but I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone wish an STD on a book reviewer.

What makes this review even more interesting is that the reviewer literally chopped the book up, which created yet another topic to discuss on the comment thread.

Last night, I took a craft knife to Anne Rice’s Pandora and I took out every page. I was left with the gutted remains of the cover itself and threw that away. It’s the first time I have ever desecrated a book in such a way and I can’t deny that it wasn’t made all the more enjoyable by how much I really and truly loathed that book.In an interesting twist, the blogger was remiss in mentioning that she’d already planned to do a craft project with a book, and she rectified this in an update to the post after Rice posted all this on social media and her fans went berserk. In other words, the blogger didn’t start out with the intention of hacking up an Anne Rice book. It just wound up that way, and she posted photos, too…before and after!!

It’s a shame people don’t know that publishers recycle print books all the time. And publishers don’t make pretty boxes out of them like the blogger did. One person pointed this out on the thread, but it didn’t seem to get much attention.

This all reminds me of the third grade. We had a teacher…Miss Clifford…who was the consummate small town spinster of her day. She wore her hair in a bun at the back of her head, half glasses on the end of her nose, and pencil skirts that kept her knees locked together at all times. Miss Clifford was the crafty type. We made Christmas trees out of cardboard and Ivory Snow, Santas out of poster board and velour paper, and what she could do with macaroni and Elmer’s glue would make you scream. And once, we even made a Christmas bell out of used copies of the Reader’s Digest through a primitive form of origami. Photo above to prove it. This is the actual bell and why I saved it I don’t have a clue.

When I read things like this about a gay teacher in a Catholic school who was fired because someone read she was a lesbian in her mom’s obituary, the post about Anne Rice and the reviewer above don’t seem quite as important. Frankly, after reading this about the school teacher, I don’t really care if the blogger wiped her behind with Rice’s book, Pandora.

From what I’ve gathered so far, this is not a gay teacher who walked around carrying rainbow flags and equal rights signs. She taught there for years and no one ever questioned her until her mother died and the obit was published.

Physical education teacher Carla Hale, 57, was fired in March after her name appeared in her mother’s obituary, which also noted Hale’s longtime lesbian partner.

You see what I mean. And this isn’t something new. For those who don’t take what it is like for gay people this far, obituaries have been a long standing issue with gay people, and it’s only recently where gay people have been mentioning their partners in public. Just think about the magnitude of that for a moment. Someone in your family passes away, and you can’t even name your partner/spouse in the obit for fear of backlash like what this teacher is now dealing with.

The main reason Hale was fired, after this obit came out, is astounding, especially coming from the Catholic church.

Hale was subsequently dismissed from Bishop Watterson Catholic High School after 19 years of service, with the school citing a morality provision in the contract between teachers and the diocese.

Ryan Field is the author of over 100 published works of LGBT fiction, the best selling Virgin Billionaire series, a pg rated hetero romance that was featured on The Home Shopping Network titled, "Loving Daylight," and a few more works of full length fiction with a pen name. He's worked in publishing for twenty years as a writer, editor, and associate editor. His work has been in Lambda Award winning anthologies and he's self-published a few novels with Ryan Field Press. You can reach him by leaving a comment here, or at rfieldj@aol.com